Sometimes a simple conversation with a friend is all you need for your life to change altogether. This is true for Frank Mathsa (26), the owner of Bohlale Farming Project, because a conversation with a friend has now led to a 12-month horticultural internship in the United States.
Mathsa is from Indermark in Bochum, Limpopo. His upcoming trip is courtesy of Awesome Travel, a South African cultural exchange, work and travel company. For over a decade, they have been assisting young opportunity-seeking graduates and professionals to ply their trade abroad on short-term contracts.
Speaking of this horizon-broadening experience, Mathsa says, “It is a great opportunity for me, which will undoubtedly open a lot of platforms when I come back, so I can implement everything that I would have learned there.”
If it weren’t for earlier Covid-19 travel restrictions, he would have long been abroad.
“I should have made the trip last year, but the travelling restrictions as well as the rate at which the Covid-19 cases were growing, meant that the agency had to cancel the trip,” he tells Food For Mzansi. He is now set to travel to the US this year.
Mathsa cultivates a wide array of vegetables, including eggplant, chillies and spinach on his two-hectare plot in the area. He started farming in September 2020 after the completion of his three-year diploma in farming management at Vhembe College (formerly Mashamba Agriculture College).
The course, he says, was divided into two parts: the first 15 months being theory, while the last 15 months were practicals which he performed at Scrabje Boerdery.
Balancing work and family
Like many other farmers, Mathsa has difficulty striking a balance between his work and family life. He leaves home in the wee hours of the morning and comes back very late. As a result, he spends little, if any, time with his loved ones.
“I spend most of my time at the farm as I would be irrigating the whole day. I must always be at the farm because we have a problem with birds that destroys crops. So, you must be there all day to watch over those birds,” he says.
“I have a shack at the farm which I usually use when I am planning to water crops in the evening. Some days I knock off very late and they sometimes complain and say, ‘These days we rarely see you.’”
Fortunately Mathsa’s long hours at the farm were not in vain. Two years have not even passed since he started the farming project, yet he is already supplying some of the biggest retail stores in the area.
“For the eggplants, I supply City Deep at the Johannesburg Market through my agent, AB de Villiers. For spinach, I supply Boxer and Spar SaveMor stores in Bochum, and Spar (SaveMor) in Vivo,” he explains.
Even better, Mathsa recently got a call from one Galito’s outlet in the area to supply them with his giant spinaches. For all these great feats, he has his mentor, Kgabo Setwaba, to thank.
Embracing many challenges
No farmer is immune to challenges in the industry, even the most established ones. And this goes for Mathsa as well.
In the early parts of 2020, he endured a horrible loss after both his serrano and jalapeño chilli peppers harvest couldn’t even sell a single packet at the Joburg Market.
Even worse, there was one point during which his chillies were doing quite well on the market, but the difficulty of acquiring a transportation letter from the local municipality saw Mathsa destroying the crops.
“I still remember supplying City Deep with chillies. It was serrano and jalapeño chilies. I sent them close to 100 bags of chillies but none of them was sold. I lost the transport money, labour and the money I used to buy the packaging bags,” he adds.
For other young people hoping to venture into agriculture, the firstborn of two sons of Martha Mathsa has the following words of advice: “If you are failing in other areas of your life, say for instance mechanical engineering, you can try a hand in farming.
“It doesn’t mean that if you did engineering, you shouldn’t risk or try something different. Moreover, farming is not a get-rich-quick scheme where you can easily score millions. You have to control the price so that you may not lose customers.”
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